Nick Maxwell by Peter Gray The widespread use of Punch cartoons in books and teaching materials on nineteenth century history is hardly surprising: these often striking images are a convenient visual aid for understanding a period in which photography was in its infancy. Yet the use of this graphic record in an unreflective manner is fraught with … Read more
HM: Could you tell us about your background? ATQS: My father was a Belfastman. He had emigrated to Australia but in the middle of the first world war, he enlisted in the Australian Expeditionary Force and was brought back to Europe. When the war ended, there was a problem getting Australian troops home so … Read more
by Andy Bielenberg A distillery was first established in Kilbeggan in 1757 when there was a proliferation of small distillers setting up in the midlands. They were attracted by the quality and availability of barley in the region, which was (and still is) the distiller’s greatest cost, and of turf from the extensive local bogs. … Read more
by Billy Kelly Even today, over three hundred years since the death of the Duke of Ormond in 1688, the legacy of his viceroyalty is magnificently apparent in the capital city of Ireland. The Royal Hospital at Kilmainham, built in 1677 on Ormond’s orders, was constructed to house the pensioners of the long Irish wars. … Read more
By Keith Jeffrey It might be argued that the most significant thing about the Irish cultural response to the First World War is its comparative absence. Perhaps it is a case of ‘the dog that didn’t bark’, itself a noteworthy enough reaction to the cataclysmic European events of 1914-18. There is, for example, no extensive … Read more